Forward of Sunday’s 2025 Oscars, PEOPLE is wanting again at previous ceremonies and sharing behind-the-scenes tales from Hollywood’s most prestigious occasion.
When Naomie Harris attended the 2017 Oscars as a Greatest Supporting Actress nominee for Moonlight, she didn’t have a speech ready.
“As a result of Viola Davis, as much as that time, had received the whole lot going. So I used to be like, ‘Viola’s going to win,’” Harris, now 48, recollects considering of the Fences star, who swept awards season. The opposite three actresses filling out their class: Octavia Spencer (Hidden Figures), Nicole Kidman (Lion) and Michelle Williams (Manchester By the Sea).
Harris — who earned rave critiques because the drug-addicted mom of a younger, homosexual Black man within the coming-of-age story — recollects chatting with one other actress earlier than she entered the Dolby Theater in Hollywood on Feb. 26, 2017.
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“I stated to her, ‘I haven’t got a speech.’ And he or she was like, ‘No, no, no, you want a speech.’ And I used to be like, ‘No, I am not going to win, so it is high-quality.’ She was like, You do not know that. Something is feasible,’” Harris recollects.
“And so abruptly I went from being like, ‘It is okay. I am simply going to sit down again’ to love, ‘Oh my God, I haven’t got a speech,’” continues Harris, now starring within the spy thriller Black Bag with Cate Blanchett, Michael Fassbender and Rege-Jean Web page.
Within the moments earlier than her class was referred to as, Harris remembers feeling “so nervous” including, “your coronary heart is actually beating out of your chest.”
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She says she felt the “terror” of a number of questions: “How am I going to rise up to stroll up these stairs in my excessive heels and this gown? Am I going to have the ability to make it alone? After which what sort of speech am I going to provide?” says Harris.
However Davis — who had already received the Golden Globe, the Critics Alternative Award and the Display screen Actors Guild Award for Fences — was referred to as when actor Mark Rylance opened the envelope to disclose Greatest Supporting Actress.
Within the second, Harris remembers feeling a little bit of reduction. “There’s this primary second of like, “Thank God. I haven’t got to go up there and communicate,’” she says.
After that pale, she realized she’d hoped she had received. “Then you definately get that second of like, ‘Oh, If solely it had been me’ in fact.”
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Harris did get to stroll as much as the stage when Moonlight received Greatest Image — after the huge confusion when La La Land was wrongfully named Greatest Image.
“It was a debacle, however made for nice TV. It is a very memorable second,” she says. “However I used to be simply so in shock by what occurred. I actually sat in my seat and even once they stated ‘You received Greatest Image’ — nobody advised me that everybody’s imagined to go on stage as nicely.”
A producer got here and picked up her so she may be a part of the triumphant second with the remainder of the Moonlight workforce. He dragged me out of my seat. In any other case, I might’ve nonetheless been there, not realizing what to do.”
Conan O’Brien hosts the 2025 Oscars, which can air dwell from the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood on Sunday, March 2, at 7 p.m. ET on ABC and Hulu.
